Missing the Moments As They Pass
by Moonlit-Jeannie
Summary: Written for degrassichick for Flashfic: Casey reflects on the years that have passed and can't help but feel that she has been left all alone, but has she really?


**AN: Wow, I actually got this thing written. Well, anyway... I had Sam (degrassichick), and I know that this is totally not what you're expecting and I apologize... but this is what you got, haha. :P Uh... so it's a songfic just in case you guys couldn't tell and it's to the song "Time" by Chantal Kreviazuk just because she rocks and I love her... So if you've heard this song, great. If not... you should listen to it sometime. It's terrific. Also, now that I've written this out... I realize that it's probably not the best song for the fic, but whatever. Here is what Sam requested: Anything that includes a glass bottle, a detention, a fight, and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Pairing will be obvious at the end, so I'm not going to put it here. Oh... and hopefully this is much happier than my last flashfic which was apparently fairly depressing. Oh, and lyrics are in italics... just so you know and don't get too terribly confused.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing people! If I owned stuff, why would I even be wasting my time to add this disclaimer? **

**-----**

_Time, where did you go?  
Why did you leave me here alone?  
_

She rushed around the house while gathering up the small toys and dirty clothes that had been left scattered around the house. Her daughter Kerrigan was asleep in the bedroom and she only had thirty minutes to get the house tidy and put the finishing touches on dinner.

For any normal person, this would have been an impossible feat, but for Casey, it was something that she had been doing since her parents divorced when she was ten years old.

Of course for most of the time that she did it she was living in a house full of people and now, she was just had the few things that Kerrigan had left out from her day before she had to go to bed. It was simple enough, especially for Casey, but as she looked around the small apartment she couldn't help but feel utterly alone.

_Wait, don't go so fast  
I'm missing the moments as they pass_

After dropping the clothes off in the hamper and the few toys off in the toy bin in Kerrigan's room, Casey headed to the kitchen to check on the dinner that she was keeping warm in the oven. On her way to the kitchen, however, a picture caught her eye and she paused her movement and picked up the frame to get a better look at the picture.

It was of her family. Well, the family that she had been born into and the family that she had acquired at age fifteen. The picture itself had been taken many years before, just a few weeks after her mom had married George Venturi.

The picture had been taken fifteen years earlier, but to her it certainly didn't seem that long. She could remember the day that the picture had been taken and when she thought about how her sister Lizzie and Edwin were now twenty-seven and married and that she herself was almost thirty… and even more mind-boggling, that little Marti who had been six at the time was now twenty-one and preparing to graduate from college in the Spring.

It was all almost inconceivable to Casey. As if she had fallen asleep one day and woken up to find things as they were now.

_Now I've looked in the mirror and the world's getting clearer  
So wait for me this time_

She looked in the mirror and lightly touched the necklace that hung loosely around her neck. The sapphire teardrop that hung from the small silver chain rested right in the middle of her chest.

It reminded Casey of their first fight. Their first real fight. They had fought before, over silly things, but never had their fights held such pent up emotion.

After he had left, she had broken down crying and she was pretty sure that he had cried a fair amount of his own while he was gone, even though he would never admit it.

The necklace had been a gift after the fight. A gift and a promise. A promise that he would never leave her again.

And he'd kept the promise as well as he could.

But still, Casey found herself alone.

_I'm down I'm down on my knees I'm begging for all your sympathy  
But you (I'm just an illusion) you don't seem to care (I wish that I could)  
You humble people everywhere (I don't mean to hurt you)  
I've looked in the mirror and the world's getting clearer  
I'll take what you give me, please know that I'm learning  
So wait for me this time_

Casey began to once again look back to her adolescence and she remembered a time when she and Derek were once again trying to compete. Or not compete exactly, but he had rubbed in the fact that he had something that she wanted… just as he had always seemed to do.

He had been made a prefect at school, something that had been Casey's suggestion to begin with and while Casey felt that the use of prefects would better the school, Derek just wanted to use his privileges as prefect to get after school band practices for his band.

Casey had of course found out about Derek's little plan and decided that she wanted to bring him down… and she tried as best as she could, but unfortunately still had to share detention with him in the end.

But before they had been punished and forced to go to detention, Casey remembered looking at him up on the stage playing with his band and her best friend Emily's boyfriend, Sheldon and seeing something that she had never seen before.

At the time, she couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was that she had seen that day, and even now she couldn't know for sure what it was that she had seen. But it didn't matter.

_I should've know better  
I shouldn't have wasted those days  
And afternoons and mornings  
I threw them all away_

Once again in the kitchen, Casey pulled out a bottle of Tabasco sauce and a carton of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia before setting them on the table. The Tabasco sauce would be generously used in her noodles and she was saving the ice cream for dessert, but felt that it needed to thaw out some before she attempted to spoon out a helping into the dish. Of course she had chosen the Cherry Garcia because the fruit part of the name made it healthy. That was her story and she was sticking to it.

She set out two plates at the table, a force of habit, before she followed that with two glasses and two sets of silverware. She poured milk into her glass, but stopped herself before she was able to fill the second glass.

Casey frowned and returned the milk to its place in the refrigerator and walked over to the stove to tend to the water that was now coming to a boil. She ripped open the wrapper on the ramen noodles and dumped them into the pot.

The front door opened and closed and Casey bit her lip. She couldn't remember if her sister had said that she would stop by for a visit that evening or not.

All thoughts seemed to cease while he was gone.

_Now this is my time  
I'm going to make this moment mine.  
(I shouldn't have wasted those days)  
I'll take what you give me, please know that I'm learning  
I've looked in the mirror  
My world's getting clearer  
So wait for me this time  
_

Two arms wrapped around Casey's waist and rested themselves on her swollen stomach. A chin rested itself on her shoulder and a face buried itself in the crook of her neck. Casey stopped stirring the pot of noodles that she had been tending to and inhaled deeply before she turned around in the arms that held her so tightly.

"Derek!" she exclaimed happily and threw her arms around the weary man who now stood before her. "I didn't think you were going to be home until tomorrow night."

Derek shrugged and grinned.

"I was able to get away. What can I say, I missed you and Kerrigan. And my little man," he added as he placed a hand to her stomach.

"Derek, 'your little man' could just as easily be another 'little princess' for you to spoil. You have to prepare yourself for the possibility of disappointment."

He pretended to think hard about this piece of information for a moment before he leaned down and kissed his wife on the lips.

"I think I can handle that. So, is there a reason that you have two plates set out? Do you have a hot date that you need to tell me about or are you just taking the whole eating for two thing way too literally?"


End file.
